Publications

Contact Us

What is “La Veta Leaders for Logic?”

by Mark Craddock
LA VETA — What exactly is the organization calling itself La Veta Leaders for Logic?Is it a “candidate committee” or an “independent expenditure committee” as defined by state campaign finance law? Is it a loose affiliation of five like-minded town board challengers?

Who has been spending money the past two weeks – for a website, yard signs and advertisement – on behalf of the five “La Veta Leaders?”

With less than 24 hours to go before citizens of La Veta will elect a mayor and four town board members, these remain questions without clear answers.

Group does not appear to be registered
According to the Colorado Secretary of State’s campaign-finance database (TRACER), there is no record of any type of campaign group calling itself “La Veta Leaders for Logic” having ever been registered in the state.

In fact, a Monday night search of the database shows only one committee with the words “La Veta” in its name – the “Committee to Support La Veta Schools,” a small-scale issue committee registered on Aug. 27, 2018, presumably to support efforts to pass a bond issue to pay for the new school. The committee’s status is still listed as active, but the TRACER search results say “there is no current election cycle summary information found for this committee.”

But even before being entered into the TRACER database, the committee would have had to register with Town Clerk Laurie Erwin.

According to one passage of state election law, C.R.S. 1-45-109 (b):

“Candidates in municipal elections, their candidate committees, any political
committee in support of or in opposition to such candidate, an issue committee supporting or opposing a municipal ballot issue, and small donor committees making contributions to such candidates shall file with the municipal clerk.”

Erwin said that, once petitions were certified and candidates named earlier this year, she presented all the candidates with a packet containing blank forms and instructions on how to report their campaign finances, including the forms needed to register committees.

As of April 1, 5 p.m., Erwin reported she had received no registration paperwork from any committees.

The genesis of the “Slate”

Trustee candidate Tony Masinton said Monday that the slate of town board challengers had its roots in early January, “even before the deadline for submission of petitions,” as an invitation for a get-together.

“I don’t really know who sent it out, it just went around,” Masinton said. “I heard about it from Jim Hoobler. We were invited to get together to see why we were running.”

His impression, he said, was that the candidates had more in common than they had differences, so “it made sense to cooperate rather than to compete.”

“It’s always been really, really loose,” he said.

The slate consists of mayoral candidate David DeTray and trustee candidates Masinton, Jim Hoobler, LaRissa Morris and Ashley Vandagriff.

He said the candidates met again in early March to discuss messaging, points of commonality, and the like.

“It was never a mandate or coordination,” he said. “It was always very loose.”

The candidates met again a couple days before the March 24 candidates’ forum, Masinton said.

“At that point we were approached by this other group of people who said ‘we want to help you out. Can we do some promotional materials for you?’” he said. “We said, ‘fine.’”

According to Masinton, those people said they had registered as a political group.

“I was told they had done it more like a PAC,” he said. “I was told ‘we’ve gone ahead and registered this.’ I didn’t look into it any further.”

Masinton declined to name any of the group’s members.“

I don’t feel like that’s my place to say that,” he said. “It sounds really shady. I would like to find out from them if this registration actually happened.”

But he insisted “the intention was never to do anything underhanded or secretive.”

Follow the money

Since mid-March, it appears money has been spent by or for the La Veta Leaders for Logic in the form of a website, yard signs and a full-page advertisement in the March 31 World Journal. Of the three, the advertisement is the easiest to trace. Even though the ad said “Paid for by the La Veta Leaders for Logic,” the $1,440 ad was billed to Hoobler. The expenditure did not appear on Hoobler’s most recent campaign-finance form, filed April 1, but should appear on his final report, to be filed by May 5.

Based on their latest campaign finance reports, no candidates — challenger or incumbent — has listed any expenditures.

Basically, no candidate has individually taken credit for the yard signs which began appearing around town immediately after the candidates’ forum, or the website which appeared about the same time. And those expenditures were almost surely made before the April 1 filing deadline.

Indeed, an ICANN registration data lookup shows the domain name lavetaleadersforchange.com was registered March 16 through GoDaddy. But the registration was handled by a third-party service, Tempe, Arizona-based Domains by Proxy, LLC, so no information is available on the website’s actual registrant, technical, administrative or billing contacts.

But any expenditures related to the domain registration, webhosting, and website development would almost certainly been made well in advance of the April 1 reporting deadline.

The World Journal reached out to all five of the slate candidates, but only Masinton and Vandagriff were available for comment Monday.

Vandagriff had been very open on Facebook about her campaign and the La Veta Leaders for Logic, even attending a Friday-night candidates’ meet-and-greet hosted by Emile Dubia at the La Veta Mercantile. But she had no comment on Monday.

“Something happened that makes me concerned for my safety and security,” she said, “so I’m going to stick with ‘no comment’ for the remainder of the campaign.”

Meanwhile, the question remains. What is the “La Veta Leaders for Logic?” And who are its shadowy members?

Cement plant concerns

Building inspector suggests a negotiated move out of Northlands to site near prison WALSENBURG — The Walsenburg City Council convened a special meeting Friday, March

Read More »